By Jessica Toonkel
At age 84, Barry Diller is reinventing himself. Again.
The studio executive-turned-digital-brand-builder-turned-publishing-magnate said Monday that his company, People Incorporated, wants to take over the rest of MGM Resorts in a deal valuing the casino giant at around $12.4 billion.
As other investors are looking to tech to drive growth, Diller is going all-in on a casino company, betting the business is one that AI can't replace.
"While everyone was running into all sorts of 'AI opportunities,' I wanted to run the other way," Diller said in an interview. "It wasn't hard for me to find MGM, where no one is going to get in between those resorts and consumers until we get to the final simulation."
Diller has made a career of unexpected wagers. Back in 1992, at the age of 50, he left his job as CEO of Fox Inc. to go out on his own and start amassing stakes in small companies including QVC and Ticketmaster.
He doubled down on digital, buying dating site Match and travel site Expedia, then went big on magazines by buying publisher Meredith in 2021. Just this year, Diller rebranded his company as People Incorporated, highlighting the flagship title, and said the conglomerate would focus on its magazine assets and MGM investment.
People Incorporated, formerly known as IAC, already owns 26.1% of MGM Resorts. Diller proposed taking MGM private, saying the casino company can't realize its full potential in the public markets.
If a deal is completed, MGM would dominate the company. MGM's market capitalization, roughly $11.2 billion before the offer was announced, is more than three times that of People Incorporated. Diller said owning MGM would provide a hedge for the publishing business, which is changing rapidly with AI.
Diller is a free thinker in everything he does, from having architect Frank Gehry design the New York headquarters for his holding company, to investing early in digital when no one else was, said Jason Blum, CEO of Blumhouse-Atomic Monster and a friend of Diller's.
"It's one thing to do it once, but it's another thing to do it again and again," Blum said. "He follows his heart no matter what the noise is around him."
Diller isn't sure he would describe what he does as reinventing himself. "I've had an endlessly long participation in the patch, as they say," he said.
Diller, who got his start in the mailroom at William Morris Agency, has always looked for a way to shake up what he saw as staid industries. He launched ABC's "Movie of the Week" feature in the late 1960s to bring more films to the broadcast network.
At Paramount Pictures, which he ran for a decade beginning in 1974, he landed hits including "Saturday Night Fever" and the "Indiana Jones" and "Star Trek" franchises.
Diller joined Fox in 1984 and worked with Rupert Murdoch to mount a competitor to the three existing broadcast networks. They created the Fox network in 1986, winning viewers with edgy shows like "Married...with Children" and "The Simpsons."
Fox and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.
Diller then dove into the digital age, acquiring or building a portfolio of web-based companies, and founded IAC in 1995.
"He went from a position of enormous strength running Fox and doing it extremely well to getting in his car and driving around the country trying to figure out where were the opportunities for someone who wanted to run his own store," said Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO who is on the board of IAC. "It was incredibly gutsy."
IAC bought Match in 1999, during the early days of online dating, and added brands including Tinder and OkCupid. Match Group went public in 2015, and IAC fully split from it in 2020.
Some digital investments seemed wild at the time, like when Diller stuck with his bid for Expedia after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks halted flights and dampened travel demand.
"I remember Barry said, 'If there is civilization, there will be travel, '" recalled Jon Miller, a former senior executive at IAC. "He has a history of making smart, contrarian bets."
IAC built a sprawling digital publishing business with brands including Verywell, Investopedia, Serious Eats and TripSavvy, many relying on Google search traffic. The conglomerate acquired magazine company Meredith in 2021, adding titles such as People, Food & Wine and Better Homes & Gardens to its roster. Yet businesses built on digital ads and e-commerce revenue from product recommendations have come under pressure, and the company's stock is down by nearly two-thirds over the past five years.
IAC spun off its stake in home-services company Angi last year, and in March said it had agreed to sell Care.com to a private-equity firm. In late April, Diller said IAC would change its name to People Incorporated, reduce staff and sharpen its focus.
"I'm willing to change anything on a dime if I see an opportunity," he told The Journal on Monday.
He said at The Journal's Future of Everything Festival last month that he would "absolutely" buy Warner Bros. Discovery's CNN, and that he had looked "very deeply" at a deal for Vox Media, which owns New York magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and other assets.
IAC first invested in MGM about six years ago, and Diller joined the board in August 2020. Monday's offer is a bet on real-world entertainment as well as the company's BetMGM online casino business, Diller said.
Diller told The Wall Street Journal that he had been considering a play for the company for the past six months.
Economic headwinds have dampened tourism to Las Vegas after a postpandemic boom, with consumers now bristling over higher starting bids at table games and increased prices for beverages and poolside cabanas. MGM's recent revenue growth has been driven by success in China and regional operations outside Las Vegas.
Diller's bid also comes when the legacy casino industry is under pressure from digital competitors, including sports platforms DraftKings and FanDuel and prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket.
But Diller noted that BetMGM has come a long way from losing $440 million two years ago, to being profitable. "I don't mind competition," he said. "We're going to do fine."
Write to Jessica Toonkel at jessica.toonkel@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 01, 2026 20:00 ET (00:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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